It’s my end-of-the-week Feedback Sandwich*. It’s like a pat on the back, wrapped around a wish. Totally magic. Please, join in and make yourself a sandwich in the comments!
Reviewing the Blog Challenge
As I wrote about last Friday, I hit my goal of posting five days a week for one-month. Today, I want to look into the month a little deeper to discover what I want to keep up with, and what could use a little improvement going forward. Bring on the Feedback Sandwich!
First Piece of Bread: Specific Good Stuff
I think the number one good thing to come out of this experiment is the fact that I wrote so many posts! I am undeniably proud of that. Except for that little hacking incident on what would have been Day 2 (so I just re-started instead) I posted every single weekday for 22 days straight.
The other thing I’m really happy about is that I shared some things I’ve been thinking about for awhile. Things like a peek into my fantasy world, the problems with balance and the shadow of accomplishment. I always thought I needed to have them all figured out before I could post, but really like the idea of sharing some of my half-cooked notions as a way of processing and getting input from you.
Posting so frequently gave me more opportunities to respond directly to the questions I’m getting asked. That resulted in a couple of Hey Shannon posts and some info specifically about NLP.
Meat in the Middle: The Stretch
As I look back at everything I’ve written about this last month, it really runs the gamut. If I had to pick one thing that I think will improve my efforts, it would be to do a little advance planning. Perhaps even, gasp, advance work. I want to elaborate on the NLP post, and I have more questions sitting in my inbox. I’m sure there are other posts that could use a little follow-up too, not to mention all the other ideas I have floating around my Evernote account.
While I’m totally okay with being haphazard, it was throwing out certain rules that allowed me to do this anyway, I would like to explore what a little planning might bring to the table.
Final Piece of Bread: What I want to take into the coming week
Mostly I want to take the spirit of the one-month challenge forward. The commitment to write every day, and post every week day. To listen to what you want to hear about and respond as quickly as I can. To share what I’m thinking and how I coach myself, so you can experiment with it too.
Thanks again for reading!
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*What’s this about a Sandwich?
Well, yes, I am hungry, but that’s not the kind of sandwich I’m talking about.
This time I’m talking about giving myself a Feedback Sandwich at the end of each week. Or major project. Or milestone. Or, well, you get the idea.
I first learned about this concept in my NLP Trainer’s Training. We were learning to train NLP practitioners, which included learning to give useful feedback. The basic format of the Feedback Sandwich is:
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Bread = Compliment, what the person did well, be specific!
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Meat = Suggestion for improvement
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Bread = Compliment, this time an overall positive assessment to take into the future.
This Sandwich comes with a warning.
For starters, it’s not necessary to create a Dagwoodian monolith of a feedback sandwich for it to be useful. It’s okay to keep it simple with a small, elegant tea sandwich. Also, I encourage carbo-loading in this case. More bread than fillings!
Another danger of the feedback sandwich is that you start getting programmed to know that criticism follows that first compliment. If I notice that I start to cringe whenever I try to give myself a compliment, I’ll probably look at another way of reviewing my week. Until then, I think with heartfelt review I’ll be just fine.
(If you’re in a position where you need to give feedback to others on a regular basis, you might want to skip the full carbo-lover’s sandwich and try this open-faced revised feedback method instead.)
What’s your feedback sandwich look like for the week?
Please share yours in the comments below, or on the Perception Studios Facebook page.
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